The Foundations of Spirituality, Part Two
Paul Evdokimov
Translated From:
Paul Evdokimov, La Nouveauté de l’Esprit: Études de Spiritualité (Bégrolles-en-Mauges: Abbaye de Bellefontaine, 1977), pp 64-107.
2. The Spiritual Life
Modern Asceticism
Spirituality applies to the concrete reality of the spiritual life of every believer; it gives structure and inspiration. But the modes of asceticism reflect the times and adapt to their mentality. In the conditions of modern life — under the weight of overwork and nervous exhaustion — sensitivity changes. Medicine protects and prolongs life, but at the same time, it diminishes resilience to suffering and deprivation. Christian asceticism is never an end in itself; it is merely a means, a method in the service of life, and it must seek to adapt to new needs.
In the past, the asceticism of the Desert Fathers imposed extreme fasts and harsh constraints; today, the battle has shifted. Man does not need additional dolorism; hair shirts, chains, and flagellations would risk breaking him unnecessarily. Today’s “mortification” would be the liberation from all dependence on stimulants of all kinds: speed, noise, excitement, drugs, alcohol. Asceticism would rather be the imposition of rest, the discipline of calm and silence, where man regains the ability to stop for prayer and contemplation — even in the heart of the world’s noise: in the subway, in the crowd, at the crossroads of a city. But above all, it would be the ability to hear the presence of others — the friends in every encounter. Fasting, rather than a self-inflicted maceration, would be a joyful renunciation of the superfluous, its sharing with the poor, a serene, natural, peaceful balance. Beyond the somatic and psychological asceticism of the Middle Ages, one would seek the eschatological asceticism of the early centuries — this act of faith that made the entire human being a joyful anticipation of the Parousia, not a chronological expectation, but a qualitative one, discerning the ultimate and the one thing necessary; for according to the Gospel, time is short, and “the Spirit and the Bride say: Come!”
Thus, asceticism becomes attentiveness to the calls of the Gospel, to the full range of the Beatitudes; it will seek humility and purity of heart, in order to deliver one’s neighbor and restore him to God. In a weary world, burdened by cares, and living at an increasingly frenetic pace, the task is to find and live out “spiritual childhood” — the freshness and evangelical simplicity of the “little way” that leads to sitting at the table with sinners and breaking bread together.
The Elements of the Spiritual Life and Its Journey
It is not only in history but in the depths of the human spirit that Christ is born, dies, and rises again. It is within this interiority that the relationship between God and man is woven, and the path of every spiritual life is traced. This life is always a going out of oneself, a meeting with the Other — and with others as well.
Thus, the essential elements of spiritual life go beyond the human alone; Dante speaks of the three participants in the “divine play”: God, man, and Satan. Likewise, the spiritual writers emphasize the three wills that confront one another in the heart of man: the will of God, which saves; the will of man, unstable and conflicted; the will of the demon, alien to man, a source of temptation and resistance.
“In the beginning,” at the moment of decisive trial for the destiny of man, his catastrophic failure plunged him beneath his true being, immersing him in the life of the senses and of matter. Man became darkened — carnally and sensually. Yet the divine economy of salvation raises him above his being, to the level of the “new creature”: “Though our outward man perish, yet the inward man is renewed day by day,” and again, “Ye have put off the old man, and have put on the new.” Here is where Saint Paul places the starting point of his vision of man in Christ.
From then on, the spiritual life is oriented toward this metamorphosis: to put on the new man — new because he has put on Christ. He is no longer simply man, man alone; he is Christified — he is in Christ, and Christ is in him. Man thus travels a dizzying distance within his own being. Saint Paul quotes a hymn charged with explosive energy: “Awake, thou that sleepest, and arise from the dead, and Christ shall give thee light” (Eph. 5:14). A variant of this text strengthens its meaning: “And thou shalt touch Christ.” This passage — from a state of death to a state of life, from hell to the Kingdom — is precisely the journey of the spiritual life.
The Break: A Second Birth
The Gospel begins with a vigorous call to metanoia: “Repent, for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand.” More precisely, it means: “Be changed” — change your entire being: body, soul, and spirit. The repentance being called for, in its fullest sense, is a radical and complete reversal of the entire economy of human existence.
The Fourth Gospel expresses the same idea in speaking of a “second birth.” Both terms — metanoia and birth — emphasize the transformation at the threshold of the world of the Spirit. Between a baptized person and someone unbaptized, there opens an abyss — the infinite distance between two natures: one fallen and sick, the other recreated and redeemed. To highlight the character of this absolute newness, the Fathers point to the miracle at the wedding in Cana — the transformation of water into wine. The symbolism of this miracle brings baptism and the Eucharist into convergence. Indeed, the baptismal water takes on the value of the blood of Christ, teaches Nicholas Cabasilas: “It destroys one life and gives rise to another... we cast off the tunics of skin and put on the royal robe.”
We can now understand to what extent the spiritual life begins with a break. It is not merely the same life supplemented by devotions, readings, and pious gestures; it is, in essence, a severing, a reversal — and immediately thereafter, a struggle, a kind of holy violence that storms heaven and seizes the Kingdom. At the threshold of this new life, we hear the words of Saint Paul: “Behold, all things are made new.”
The Gospel speaks of the fearful power of the Prince of this world; Saint Paul even calls him the “god of this world” (2 Corinthians 4:4). This power of evil is what makes such a radical break necessary. The Church takes its deadly force seriously, and that is why ancient rites placed an exorcism before baptism, along with a solemn renunciation of the Evil One. Facing west, where the daylight fades, the catechumen renounces the past — placed under the dominion of the powers of darkness. Then, turning toward the east, where the day begins, he professes his faith and receives grace. This is a dense summary of the whole spiritual life. The sacrament emphasizes its forward movement — a movement that never stops: “No one who puts his hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the Kingdom of God” (Luke 9:62). Every pause is a step backward. The total demand of the baptized person’s consecration places him in a state of extreme vigilance at every moment; but his fidelity to the “great baptismal profession” of faith will endure the test of time and the assault of temptations —
for Christ will fight in him, and with him.
Accepting Oneself
And yet, the risk is great. The brutal experience of failure and powerlessness can bring a person to the edge of despair. The temptation is to cry out at the injustice, to say that God asks too much of us — that our cross (symbol of our difficulties) is heavier than everyone else’s. An old story tells of the protest of a simple and sincere man. The angel leads him to a pile of crosses of various sizes and invites him to choose one that suits him. The man picks the lightest one — only to discover that it was his own! Man is never tempted beyond his strength.
God expects from our faith a courageous act: the full and conscious acceptance of our destiny. He asks us to embrace it freely. Perhaps this is the most difficult act of all — to accept oneself as one is, even in the most hidden recesses of the soul. “He who sees himself as he is is greater than one who raises the dead,” say the spiritual masters, who also stress the vital importance of seeing oneself laid bare, without any self-deception. The vision is always fearsome; it is precisely in that moment that one must look upon Christ. This is the experience of Saint Paul — and of every Christian: “When I would do good, evil is present with me… O wretched man that I am! Who shall deliver me? Jesus Christ our Lord” (Romans 7:15–25).
At the moment of heavy solitude, in the radical helplessness of the natural man, humble self-acceptance inclines one to lay one’s entire being at the foot of the Cross. And then, suddenly, Christ lifts that crushing burden in our place: “Learn of me, for my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.”
The fiat bursts forth: “Thy will be done”; I accept it as my own. In it, I decipher what God has thought of me. In it, I recognize my destiny. Man is decentered from himself, made light and joyful: “Behold the handmaid of the Lord”; “The friend of the Bridegroom rejoices greatly at the sound of the Bridegroom’s voice. This joy of mine is now complete” (John 3:29).
All man can say is: “All is in Thee, Lord; I am Thine, receive me.” Though he may not yet understand everything, he grasps more than enough for the present moment. Destiny regains the freshness of a life that is accepted and loved. The true spiritual life begins only after this “second birth,” this personal Pentecost.
The Infernal Dimension of the World
The East, so attuned to the Resurrection, is equally sensitive to the theme of hell, which Saint Paul expresses in a terse and striking way in Ephesians 4:9–10: “He ascended — what does it mean but that he also descended first into the lower parts of the earth? …so that he might fill all things.” We see here the vast span of the itinerary traced between the two poles of the course of the winged Lamb: the descent into hell and the ascent into the Kingdom. “Having ascended on high, he led captivity captive” (Eph. 4:8).
Icons deepen the liturgical texts and offer a contemplative reading of them. Where words halt, powerless before the unspeakable mystery, the icon continues. The office of Holy Saturday sings: “You descended to earth to save Adam, and not finding him, O Master, you went down even to Hades to seek him.” The icon of the Nativity refers to this text, showing the dense darkness of the cave where the Child lies, as though within the shadowy womb of hell. To place himself “at the heart of creation,” Christ mystically locates his birth in hell itself, at the very point of ultimate despair. Since Adam, humanity has arrived at Sheol — the dark abode of the dead — and so it is there that Christ goes to find it. “Light combats darkness, life annihilates death,” says Gregory of Nyssa. The Cross, as the “balance of justice,” stands at the center — as the axis uniting Kingdom and hell. The icon of the Resurrection is precisely the icon of the Descent into Hell. For the earth, Passion Friday is a day of grief; but in hell, it is already Pascha. The icon shows Christ trampling the shattered gates of Hades. It is not from the tomb that Christ rises, but from among the dead and from hell itself — as though “from a bridal chamber.”
Saint Maximus emphasizes that death is the result of separation from God. But then how is the death of Christ possible, if Christ is God and man inseparably united? His death is unique; it is not the death of every man. Death is the exhaustion, the draining away of life caused by the corruption of nature. More deeply still, the extreme case is the state of the atheist who is “deprived of God,” emptied of God in his very substance, separated from Him by the void of nothingness. Yet is a limit case, because man — even an atheist — is never abandoned by God, for Christ assumes even what is “outside” of God, since, according to the adage of the Fathers: “what is not assumed is not saved.” Christ goes to the very limit — a limit that surpasses us entirely. Everything is centered on that one word whose depth is divine: the cry of Jesus: “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” It is at the moment when the Father abandons the Son, when the Son loses the Father and becomes “deprived of God,”
that he can truly die — identifying himself with a radical atheism, one that goes even beyond the human and touches the demonic abyss. Christ freely accepts to be murdered at the moment of abandonment, so as to offer to his murderers — and to all atheists — forgiveness and resurrection.
The descent into hell thus becomes ontologically possible: Christ descends to where God is not — into that infernal solitude that has placed itself on the edge of God’s presence, into the “outer darkness” in relation to God. From that point on, everything is held in the pierced hand of the Word; He has partaken even in God’s absence, even in the Father’s abandonment.
The liturgical memorial makes us contemporaries of every biblical event. More precisely, it reveals their continued presence — what is present today, not merely what happened yesterday. When I say, “Christ is risen,” I am also saying that I am alive, that eternal life already lives within me. This has immediate consequences for each person’s spiritual life.
Saint John Chrysostom recalls an important aspect of the sacrament of baptism: “The act of descending into the water and then rising again symbolizes the descent into hell and the return from that abode.” Thus, baptism is not only dying and rising with Christ, but also following him into his descent into hell. For hell is more fearsome than death; it is conscious life within the void, in the “outside” of God. Christ descends there and emerges bearing the wounds of his crucified love. And every baptized person, following Christ, also bears the marks of the priestly concern of Christ the High Priest — his anguish over the fate of those who are “deprived” of God, over the infernal destiny of sinners and atheists.
The celebration of Pentecost is attentive to this dimension. It includes the three great prayers of Saint Basil, in which the Church prays for all the dead since the creation of the world. The superabundant grace of the Feast removes every limit. Once a year, the Church even prays for the suicides, following Christ’s path from heaven to hell, and from hell to heaven.
According to the adage of the Fathers, God can do all things — except force man to love him. His destiny among men is suspended upon the fiat of humanity. To preserve the freedom of this choice, Christ renounces his omnipotence and suspends every miracle.
The apparent passivity of God conceals his suffering. He foresees the worst, and his love is only the more watchful because of it—for man can refuse God and build his life upon that refusal. What prevails? Love or freedom; both are infinite — and hell poses this question.
The East remains a stranger to any judicial or “penal” principle. Its attitude toward sinners is therapeutic; it belongs not to a courtroom, but to a clinic. Without presuming anything, the Church entrusts herself to the philanthropy of God and redoubles her prayer for both the living and the dead. Some among the saints even find the boldness to pray for the demons. The love of God remains unchanged; God loved the world in its fallen state. “It is not right to say that the sinners in hell are deprived of the love of God... But that love acts differently: it becomes suffering in the damned and joy in the blessed,” says Saint Isaac.
Every baptized person is invisibly marked, with the stigmata hidden from the eyes; he bears a deep wound from the destiny of all others and adds something to the suffering of Christ, who entered into agony until the end of the world. To “imitate Christ” is to descend after him into the very depths of the abyss of our world. Imitation means conformity to the whole Christ; and as Saint Maximus says, “The love of God and the love of man are two aspects of a single total love.” My personal stance, then, is to struggle against the hell that threatens me if I fail to love in order to save my neighbor.
“Hell is other people,” says Sartre. A Christian will say: the destiny of others is my hell. For one who lives deeply in Christ, the experience of hell is immediate. But while the desperate explore the Satanic depths and hurl their blasphemy toward heaven, the Gospel calls believers to “move mountains” — a symbol of the omnipotence of faith.
During the Orthodox matins of the night of Pascha, in the silence at the end of Saturday night, the priest and people leave the church. The procession stops outside before the closed door of the darkened temple. For a brief moment, this closed door symbolizes the tomb of the Lord — death, hell. The priest makes the sign of the cross on the door, and under the irresistible force of that gesture, the door swings open wide. All enter into the church, now flooded with light, singing: “Christ is risen from the dead!” The door of hell has become once more the door of the Church — the door of the Kingdom.
One cannot go further than this in the symbolism of the Feast... Yes, the world in its totality is at once condemned and saved; it is at once hell and the “new earth” of the Kingdom. Spiritual life teaches us gradually that it is in our world — our world of television, ultrasounds, interplanetary travel, a world both atheistic and believing, paradisiacal and infernal, yet always loved by God — that man is called to the miracle of his faith and to bear witness among men.
The Struggle of the Spiritual Life
“Put on the whole armor of God, that you may be able to stand firm.” Saint Paul exhorts every believer to train for the battles of faith, offering a military and athletic image of asceticism: the soldier and the athlete. Tradition has given this term a precise technical meaning: it refers to the “unseen warfare” — the effort to gain mastery of the spiritual over the material.
After the unique and once-for-all achievement of the Desert Fathers, there is no return to that era, for we now live in a different spiritual age. The later tradition magnificently restores the balance. The spiritual teachers emphasize a movement inward: “Enter into your soul and there you will find God, the angels, and the Kingdom.” “The purified heart becomes the inner heaven.”
It is no longer through extraordinary conditions of life, but through unceasing prayer, that one is likened to the angels. This new awareness blossoms into the cosmic charity of the saints. The Councils discourage all exaggeration: “Excessive fasting does as much harm as gluttony.” To a stylite who asked about the reward he might receive, an angel replied that it would be the same as that of a comedian from Damascus who had given his entire fortune to a woman in distress. When a great ascetic, Paphnutius, asked to be shown the perfect, he saw: a bandit who had rescued a lost woman in the desert; a village chief who was just and generous to all; a merchant who gave his goods to the poor. An anchorite once said to a monastery abbot: “The sun has never seen me eat.” To which the abbot replied: “And the sun has never seen me angry.”
No asceticism without love draws near to God. Saint Maximus says: “We will be judged for the evil we have done, but above all for the good we have neglected — and for the fact that we have not loved our neighbor.”
Asceticism in the spiritual life today guards the spirit from all forms of domination by the world, and proposes to overcome evil by creating good. Thus, it is never an end in itself, but only a means, a strategy. Man can generate a morbid, phantasmagorical atmosphere in which he sees nothing but sin and evil. But evangelical asceticism is marked not by fear in excess, but by love overflowing with cosmic tenderness. It prays “for all creatures—even for reptiles and demons.” Saint Dorotheos offers a beautiful image of salvation in the form of a circle: At its center is God, and all men are on the circumference. The closer one draws to the center — God — the more the rays of the circle — our neighbors — draw near to one another. Saint Isaac says to his disciple: “Here, my brother, is a commandment I give you: let mercy always outweigh everything else on your scale — until the moment when you feel within yourself the mercy that God feels toward you and the world.”
The balance sought discourages excessive self-analysis, which may lead to scrupulosity. Perfect moderation is essential, sometimes with the help of an experienced guide, or the beneficial atmosphere of a living community. Origen counsels discernment in choosing one’s spiritual directors: “Wherever there are true teachers, Jesus Christ is in their midst — provided that those teachers remain in the temple and never depart from it.” For Origen, the temple signifies the uninterrupted contemplation of Jesus.
Asceticism has nothing in common with moralism. The opposite of sin is not virtue, but faith. Moral imperatives appeal to natural human strength; but any autonomous ethic is fragile and of limited efficacy. It cannot say to a paralytic, “Rise and walk!” Imperatives cannot forgive, cannot absolve, cannot make a fault nonexistent, nor raise the dead. Their rigid appearance, once systematized, conceals the Phariseism of “the pride of the humble.” This is the most insidious form of pride, for “Once pride is mistaken for humility, the illness has no cure,” say the spiritual masters. We are called to be active, courageous, heroic — but even these “virtues” are gifts that the Spirit can withdraw at any moment. Nothing belongs to us. Hence, humility even on the heights of sanctity: a constant posture of the soul in the presence of God. Saint Anthony once saw the whole universe covered in the snares of the devil and asked, “How then can any be saved?” And the divine voice answered: “Through humility — for the snares do not even touch it.”
Humility forbids feeling “saved,” but it awakens a permanent, disinterested joy — a joy that springs simply from the fact that God exists. The soul recognizes God in the confession of its total helplessness; it relinquishes itself and no longer belongs to itself. Oblation — self-offering — is humility become action. The naked man follows the naked Christ; he stands in the watchfulness of his spirit and waits for the coming of the Lord. But his soul bears within it the world of all men. In the beautiful phrase of Gregory of Nyssa, a faithful person is “the guardian of divine philanthropy.” At the evening of his life, man will be judged according to his love...
Interiorized Monasticism
According to the Fathers, monks are those who live the life according to the Gospel, seek the one thing needful, and apply violence to themselves in everything.1 It is clear that these demands apply to all people. “When Christ,” says John Chrysostom, “commands us to follow the narrow path, he is addressing everyone. Monk and layman alike must attain the same heights.” “Those who live in the world — even though married — must in every respect resemble the monks.” “You are gravely mistaken if you think that some things are required of laypeople and others of monks… they will be held to account by the same standard.”
Theodore the Studite lays out the monastic program and adds: “Do not think it applies only to monks and not, in its entirety and equally, to laypeople.” Saint Nilus holds that monastic practices apply to everyone — but each in his own personal way. Saint Tikhon of Zadonsk wrote to the ecclesiastical authorities: “Do not be in haste to multiply the number of monks. The black robe does not save. He who wears white robes but has the spirit of obedience, humility, and purity — he is a true monk of interiorized monasticism.” It is, for each person, a matter of adaptation — a personal equivalent to the monastic vows.
The Vow of Poverty
To turn stones into bread — the first temptation in the desert — this simplistic miracle would above all eliminate the poor; not the beggar, object of charity bazaars, but the Poor One: the One who shares his very being, his eucharistic flesh and blood. Thus, every true poor person is a true rich one, who, by the sweat of his heart, shares what he is. Such “poverty” was preached as the only viable economic solution by Fathers like John Chrysostom and Basil the Great. The Gospel demands what no political doctrine requires of its followers, for it addresses the royal gift of a free spirit. On a global scale, only an economy based on need rather than profit has any real chance of success — but it necessarily involves sacrifice and renunciation. One cannot enjoy goods in an anarchic way. True needs vary according to vocation and profession; but what is essential is the independence of spirit from possession, and the capacity to love things as gifts from God. To live from what is given “in addition” is to live between misery and excess. Even the monastic ideal does not preach personal destitution, but a wise frugality of needs.
The standard of poverty — always personal — requires creative invention, and excludes all simplistic sectarianism. The issue is not privation, but use: it is the quality of the gift contained in a glass of water offered that will justify a man at the Last Judgment. This is why Saint James clarifies the deeper meaning of almsgiving: “Visit widows and orphans in their affliction.” If there is nothing material to share, one can still follow the example of the “unfaithful steward” in the Gospel parable — who distributes his Master’s riches (the inexhaustible love) to multiply “friendships in Christ.” He who possesses nothing becomes, like Symeon the New Theologian, “the poor brother of all.” Symeon, Anna, Joseph, Mary — they are the “poor of Israel”, yet already “rich in God”, because the Holy Spirit was upon them (Luke 2:25). The poor is the friend of Yahweh. The Virgin, in her Magnificat, sings the hymn to poverty and reveals in the poor a sacrament of the presence of Christ.
The Vow of Chastity
Origen speaks of the “chastity of the soul”; the Desert Fathers, of the “purification of the heart.” To this spiritual maturity, this virginity of the spirit, attain — on equal footing — even those monks who were once married. There is here a transcendence of mere physiological condition toward a chaste structure of the spirit. For Clement of Alexandria, the “Edenic charism” of marriage is precisely its chastity.
Chaste love is drawn, magnetically, to the heart that remains virginal beyond all bodily enactment. According to Scripture, it is the full “knowing” of two persons — a conversation from spirit to spirit, in which the body becomes the wondrous vehicle of the spiritual. Hence: “Use your body with holiness and honor” (1 Thess. 4:4). Like a pure substance, suited for liturgical use, the chaste person is wholly — body and soul — the matter of the sacrament of marriage. His charism of monogamous love brings about the transcendence of self-enclosure into the transparent presence of one for the other, of one toward the other — so as to offer themselves together, as one being, to God.
Chastity integrates all the elements of the human person, and Saint Paul speaks of the salvation of every mother “through chastity” (1 Tim. 2:15). His dialectic of circumcision in the flesh becomes interiorized as “circumcision of the heart,” and applies equally to chastity. “The virginity of the flesh belongs to a few; the virginity of the heart must belong to all,” says Saint Augustine. Carnal sin is the sin of the spirit against the flesh. According to Saint John Chrysostom, “Love changes the very substance of things.” It elevates empirical ends to purposes shaped by the spirit, and makes of love a pure source of immaterial joy. The story of Tobias beautifully portrays the victory over concupiscence. The name of the angel Raphael means “God’s remedy” — he is chastity itself present in every amor magnus, when it is kindled by the “consuming fire of the Eternal” (Song of Songs 8:6).
The Vow of Obedience
The greater the authority of a true spiritual father, the greater is his self-effacement. A disciple once expressed the aim of his request well: “My Father, entrust to me what the Holy Spirit suggests to you, so that my soul may be healed.” Abba Poemen defines the art of a staretz2 in these terms: “Never command; be an example to all — never a legislator.” A young man once came to a hermit seeking instruction, but the old man said nothing. When asked why, the elder replied: “Am I a superior, to give you commands? I will say nothing. If you wish, do what you see me do.” From that moment, the young man imitated the hermit in all things, and thus learned the meaning of free silence and obedience.
A spiritual father is never a “director of conscience.” He is above all a charismatic. He does not engender a spiritual child for himself; he engenders a child of God. The disciple receives the charism of attention; the father, that of being an instrument of the Holy Spirit. “Call no man father” means that all true fatherhood partakes of the one Fatherhood of God — and that all obedience is obedience to the will of the Father.
John of Lycopolis gives this advice: “Discern your thoughts devoutly according to God; and if you cannot, ask one who is able to discern them.” Theognostus adds: “He who has realized spiritual submission and brought the body into subjection to the spirit has no further need to be subject to a man — he is subject to the Word of God as a true obedient one.” And more strongly still: “One who wishes to dwell in the desert must not need to be taught; he must be a teacher himself — otherwise, he will suffer harm.”
But this is a word for the strong. In all cases, there must be no idolatry of a spiritual father, even if he is a saint. Every word of counsel from a staretz should lead to the state of one who, freed, bows before the face of God. Obedience, in all its forms, crucifies the self-will, so as to bring forth the ultimate freedom: a spirit listening to the Spirit.
Above the ethics of slaves and hirelings, the Gospel offers the ethics of the friends of God: “I no longer call you servants… I call you friends,” says Christ (John 15:15). He asks man to fulfill His will as if it were his own. In saying “Thy will be done,” I desire it — I will it, so that Thy will may be done. Such agreement raises the human spirit to the very level of the heart of God.
Man, made in the image of God, drawn toward his Archetype, yearns to surpass himself and to throw himself into God, where he finds the quieting of his longing. Holiness is nothing other than the unquenchable thirst, the dense desire, for God. The cultivation of attentiveness teaches us to see every human being as the image of God. “A perfect monk,” says Saint Nilus, “will esteem, after God, all men as God Himself.” This iconographic way of seeing every person explains the astonishing optimism and luminous joy of the spiritual elders — their exalted estimation of man, who is the “dwelling place of God.” One then understands Saint Seraphim of Sarov, who greeted every person he met with the words: “My Joy.” He saw God himself approaching him; he read divine love on every face, and joyfully saluted His presence.
The Progression of the Spiritual Life
Seen from below, the spiritual life is an unending struggle; seen from above, it is the acquisition of the gifts of the Holy Spirit. It begins with a profoundly realistic vision of oneself; the soul may then utter the true cry: “From the abyss of my iniquity, I call upon the abyss of Thy mercy!”
The ascent is gradual. Thus, the Ladder of Divine Ascent by John Climacus describes a perfectly studied and measured progression. Charity, for example, would be found at the summit. A pedagogical sense warns of the danger of turning love into an emotional game, for this is crucified love. “Physician, heal thyself first!”
A spiritual person is a saint who confesses himself a sinner. Repentance is the awareness that the human response to God’s love is always inadequate. It is a constant state of the soul, deepening in proportion to the soul’s approach to the heights. Here, humility appears as a very great power, for it eradicates all spirit of resentment. Only humility overcomes pride, and it is the act that places the axis of the human being in God.
The Passions
The biblical symbolism of the “forbidden fruit” highlights the power of suggestion: “The tree was good for food, pleasing to the eyes, and desirable.” In its sensual and aesthetic aspect, the object of desire immerses man in the life of the senses — preferred, in that moment, over the deepening of communion with God. Man finds himself dominated by the passionate part of his nature. This is why asceticism seeks to neutralize the passions: to externalize and reject their God-fleeing tendencies — and this is the therapeutic purpose of confession. Long before the discoveries of depth psychology, ascetical wisdom already understood the subconscious and the danger of repression. It emphasized not the liberating power of psychoanalysis, but of confession. “A hidden thought corrodes the heart. He who hides becomes ill,” observes Saint John Cassian. Self-love closes a man in on himself. But openness of soul prevents the formation of complexes, exposes them, and heals from morbid scrupulosity. To externalize guilt, there must be the presence of a witness, a therapist of God, one who listens in order to break solitude and place the penitent back into communion with the Body; grace does the rest. “Forgive us, as we also forgive…” —this phrase initiates us into universal culpability. Every believer, before communion, confesses: “Of all sinners, I am the first.”
The Charisms of the Spiritual Life
Saint Cyril of Jerusalem enumerates several charisms: “To one, the Spirit strengthens temperance; to another, he teaches mercy; to another, fasting; and finally, the exercises of the spiritual life.” Saint Paul especially prays for the spirit of discernment — the faculty of judgment capable of perceiving and choosing decisively. A perverted will diverts the heart’s original intentionality, seeking the absolute in idols or passions. The method of transvaluation of values helps to discern the true Absolute.
Discernment, vigilance, and the guarding of the heart allow one to recognize evil before being tempted to commit it. These charisms interrupt all interior dialogue with evil suggestion, replacing it with the “beautiful images” of the truly desirable, as described in the Apocalypse. They restore the original form — the image of God. Origen pauses over Paul’s words: “That Christ may be formed in you” (Gal. 4:19). He sees in this the act of “imagining” Christ within the heart of his disciples. The German verb einbilden is quite precise here. Once “imagined,” introduced and formed in the soul, the presence of Christ, in return, forms the soul according to his own theandric reality: “It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me.”
The spiritual life thus becomes a ceaseless tension — what Gregory of Nyssa calls epektasis — a reaching ever upward, toward the Most High. It cultivates a refined creative imagination, exercising a fast of the spiritual eyes and ears. If everything in existence tends to suggest — through discourse, science, art — a certain pressure upon the soul, the believer receives the strongest suggestion, for it is God who suggests, yet his suggestion is devoid of all violence. Abba Philemon advises: “By your imagination, look within your heart, for the pure in heart see God as in a mirror.”
The “impassible passion” refers to the maximally enflamed state of one who is spiritually awakened. “What is the charitable heart?” asks Isaac the Syrian: “It is a heart that burns with love for all creation — for men, for birds, for animals, even for demons... moved by an infinite compassion that arises in the heart of those who are assimilated to God.” Such a passionate one no longer condemns — neither sinners nor the children of this age; he desires only to love and venerate, without distinction. John Climacus writes: “He who has kept his ardor to the end never ceases to add fire to fire.” God does nothing alone. To a monk who asked him to pray for him, Abba Anthony replied: “Neither I nor God will have mercy on you, if you do not take this work seriously yourself — especially in prayer.”
The “communion of sinners” is inseparable from the “communion of saints.” A fool-for-Christ3 prayed on his deathbed: “Let all be saved, let the whole earth be saved.” Another, when asked about insults and mockery, said he had never met a man who was truly evil.
Today, in lands marked by the cross and silence, spirituality becomes that of the martyrs. Its greatness bursts forth in striking doxologies. It gives thanks to God for suffering and persecution, and entrusts even the demons into God’s hands. At the edge of what is bearable, man can only say “Glory to God” and redouble his prayer — for the living and the dead, for the victim and the executioner.4 It is then that he weds the heart of God and begins to understand the unspeakable. A striking prayer circulates among believers. It speaks of “consoling the Consoler by our abandonment and our love”: “Forgive us all, bless us all — the thieves and the Samaritans, those who fall by the roadside and the priests who pass them by, all our neighbors: executioners and victims, those who curse and those who are cursed, those who rebel against You and those who bow before Your love. Take us all into Yourself, O holy and just Father.”
Christ came to awaken the living and to change death into a sleep of expectation — into a vigil of the spirit. The living are beyond death, and the dead are living: this is the joyful revelation of the Christian faith. Saint Paul says: “All things are yours — whether life or death” (1 Cor. 3:21–22); both, equally, can be transformed into gifts of God. Plato taught philosophy as the art of dying well; Christian faith teaches us how to die into the resurrection.
Prayer
“Pray without ceasing,” insists Saint Paul, because prayer is the source and the most intimate form of our spiritual life. The quality of our prayer — its depth, its density, its rhythm — measures our spiritual health and reveals us to ourselves. True prayer takes place on the level of a collected and silent spirit; it is there that the soul is mysteriously visited. “The friend of the Bridegroom stands and hears him” — and the essence of the state of prayer is precisely “to stand there,” to attend to the presence of Christ.
In the beginning, prayer is unsettled; a person pours out all the psychic contents of the self. But in prayer, chatter disperses the soul. And yet, “it is enough to keep your hands raised,” says Saint Mark. The Lord’s Prayer is brief. One hermit would begin it at sunset and end it by saying “Amen” with the first rays of dawn. It is not a matter of words: the spiritual elders were content to pronounce the name of Jesus — but in that Name, they contemplated the Kingdom.
A serious distortion turns prayer into mechanical repetition of formulas. Yet, according to the spiritual masters, it is not enough to have prayer, rules, or habit; one must become prayer, become prayer incarnate: to make one’s life a liturgy, to pray with the most ordinary things, to live in unceasing communion. The spiritual fathers recount the story of a humble tanner who spoke of the three forms of prayer: petition, offering, and praise. He showed how these become a state of prayer, capable of sanctifying every moment of time — even for someone who seems to have none. In the morning, short on time, this very simple man would present all the inhabitants of Alexandria before the face of God, saying: “Have mercy on us sinners.” During the day, while working, his soul never ceased to feel that his whole labor was an offering: “To you, Lord.” And in the evening, full of joy at still being alive and protected, his soul could only say: “Glory to You.” This is the prayerful vision of life itself — in which the humblest task of a worker or a housekeeper, and the creation of a genius, are equally performed as offerings before the face of God, as a task entrusted by the Father.
According to the Bible, the Name of God is both a form and a place of His presence. The Jesus Prayer, or Prayer of the Heart, opens the inner spaces of the soul and draws Jesus into them through the unceasing invocation: “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.” This prayer of the Gospel publican contains the whole message of the Bible: the Lordship of Jesus, His divine sonship, and therefore the confession of the Trinity; and the abyss of the Fall crying out to the abyss of divine mercy. This prayer resounds continuously at the depth of the soul. It takes on the rhythm of breathing, joined to the very breath, even during sleep: “I sleep, but my heart is awake” (Song of Songs 5:2). Jesus, drawn into the heart, becomes interiorized liturgy — the Kingdom within the soul at peace. The Name fills the person like a temple, transfiguring him into a dwelling place of divine presence.
The invocation of the Name of Jesus is accessible to every person, in all the circumstances of life. It places the Name like a divine seal upon all things. Saint John Chrysostom says: “Let your house be a church. Revere your Master. Let the children join you in common prayer.” This prayer carries before the Father the cares and sufferings of all men, their sorrows and their joys. Every moment of our time is refreshed by this fiery contact of praying spirits.
In the homes of the faithful, one always sees the icon placed high, at the focal point of prayer. It lifts the gaze toward the Most High and the one thing needful. Contemplative prayer passes through the icon, so to speak, and comes to rest only in the living, present content it reveals. From a neutral dwelling, it makes a domestic church; from the life of the believer, an interior and continuous liturgy. When a guest enters the home, he bows before the icon, receives the gaze of God, and only then greets the master of the house. Honor is first rendered to God; honors paid to men follow after. Never merely a decoration, the icon gathers the entire interior space around the radiance of the beyond, which reigns there without rival. The little lamp burning before the icon expresses the movement of the spirit: to be a living flame, always at prayer and before the invisible. This is the liturgical dimension of the spiritual life.
Liturgical Prayer
Liturgical prayer introduces us immediately into collegial consciousness, according to the meaning of the word leitourgia, which signifies common work. It teaches the true relationship between the self and others, helping us to loosen our grip on ourselves and to make the prayer of humanity our own. Through it, the destiny of each person becomes present to us. The liturgical pronoun is never singular.
The liturgy filters out what is overly subjective, emotional, or fleeting. While full of wholesome emotion and powerful affective life, it offers a finished form — made perfect through long centuries and countless generations who have prayed in the same way. I hear the voice of John Chrysostom, of Basil, of Symeon, and so many others; they have left the trace of their adoring spirit and draw me into their prayer. Liturgical prayer establishes measure and rule, but also invites spontaneous, personal prayer, where the soul sings and speaks freely to its Lord.
Should one wait for the moment of inspiration, at the risk of never finding it? Prayer always involves an element of effort. “When a person begins to pray, obstacles immediately try to stop him… Prayer requires struggle, a battle,” say the masters. Origen writes that prayer is like ascending a high mountain — it is tiring. The elders advise: Pray as if inspiration were not lacking, and the miracle of grace will take place.
Still, one may ask: “Why pray? Does not God already know what we need?” Yes — God listens to our prayer, corrects it, and makes it part of His will. The persistence of the widow in the Gospel compels a response, and shows the power of faith. Perhaps even hell depends, in part, on the violence of the saints, on the flame of their prayer; perhaps the salvation of all is something God also awaits from our prayer…
Do we have enough time to pray? Far more than we think. How many idle or distracted moments could become moments of prayer? Even worry can be offered — if it opens a dialogue with God. One can even offer exhaustion that prevents prayer, or the very inability to pray. “The memory of God, a sigh — without even having uttered a word — is already prayer,” says Saint Barsanuphius. Staretz Ambrose advises: “Every day, read a chapter from the Gospels. And when anxiety grips you, read again until it passes. If it returns, read the Gospel again.” This is the passage from “written word to substantial Word” (Nicodemus of the Holy Mountain) — a passage decisive for the spiritual life. “The Word, mysteriously broken, is Eucharistically consumed,” say the Fathers.
The Universal Priesthood of the Laity
The idea of a profane people has no place in the Bible; it is simply unimaginable. Scripture teaches the sacred and priestly character of every member of the People of God. The sacrament of chrismation (confirmation in the West) establishes all the baptized in the same priestly nature. From within this equal priestly status, some are chosen, set apart, and established by divine act as bishops and presbyters. This is a functional difference of ministries, not an ontological difference of nature. There can be no division or opposition between clergy and laity. Thus, the bishop and the priest participate in the priesthood of Christ by their sacred function; but the layperson participates in the one priesthood of Christ by his very being — through his sanctified existence, through his priestly nature. Sealed with the gifts, anointed by the Spirit, every layperson is a priest of his own existence; he offers his life and being as a sacrifice.
Spiritually, the laity embody the condition of interiorized monasticism; they assume in the world the ministry of witness. Ancient tradition saw the time of engagement as a kind of monastic novitiate. Instead of banquets — often profaning the sacred — after receiving the sacrament, newlyweds would go directly to a monastery. There, for a time, they would be initiated into monastic life so as to be better initiated into their new conjugal vocation, their conjugal priesthood.
The sacrament of chrismation is the sacrament of the universal priesthood. Upon the person newly born in baptism, the Holy Spirit descends to infuse the gift of action. It is the sacrament of strength, arming us as “soldiers and athletes of Christ,” to bear witness without fear or weakness, and to carry out the apostolate of charismatic love.
Saint Cyril of Jerusalem tells his catechumens: “The Holy Spirit arms you for battle… He watches over you as His soldier, and you will stand firm against every opposing power.” Every layperson is, above all, a combatant. The chrismation of every part of the body, according to Eastern tradition, symbolizes the tongues of fire at Pentecost. It is accompanied by the formula: “The seal of the gift of the Holy Spirit.” The entire layperson, in his whole being, is sealed with the gifts — he is an entirely charismatic being. The prayer of the sacrament specifies the purpose of the gifts: “May he take pleasure in serving You in every word and deed.” It is the consecration of all life to the lay ministry, a ministry essentially ecclesial.
The total character of this consecration is highlighted in the rite of tonsure, which is identical to that of entering the monastic order. The prayer says: “Bless Your servant who has come to offer You, as firstfruits, the tonsure of the hair of his head.” It is the total offering of his life. The eschatological emphasis strengthens this meaning: “May he give You glory, and may he see the good things of Jerusalem all the days of his life.” Thus, every moment of time opens onto the eschaton, the final reality, and every act and every word is placed at the service of the King.
During a service, the choice of the reading is already a commentary. During the sacrament [of chrismation], the conclusion of the Gospel according to Saint Matthew is read: “Go and teach all nations.” This command of the Lord is thus addressed to every baptized person; and it is precisely in order to fulfill this command that the sacrament gives its grace: he must preach to others what he has received in baptism. Alongside officially commissioned missionaries, every confirmed Christian is an “apostolic person,” each in his own way. It is through the whole of his being — sealed with gifts, it is through his life — that he is called to give unceasing witness.
Saint Macarius says: “Christianity is not something mediocre; it is a great mystery. Meditate on your own nobility... through the anointing, all become kings, priests, and prophets of the heavenly mysteries.” Saint Ecumenius clarifies: “Kings, by mastery over our passions; priests, by offering our lives as sacrifice; prophets, by being instructed in the great mysteries.” Origen expresses it admirably: “All who have received the anointing have become priests… if I love my brothers to the point of giving my life for them, and fight for the truth unto death… if the world is crucified to me and I to the world, I have offered a sacrifice, and I become the priest of my own existence.”
Tracing the patristic tradition, one can sketch in broad strokes a certain “type” of the layperson: he is, above all, a man of prayer, a liturgical being. Today, in Communist countries where the Church has more than ever been reduced to silence, this deprivation becomes a powerful call to recenter on the one thing needful. The Russian episcopate exhorted the laity, in the absence of regular liturgical life, to become temples themselves, to prolong the liturgy in their lives, to make their life itself a liturgy, to present to those without faith a liturgical face, a liturgical smile… In this final tension, the Church teaches how to pray, how to participate in the struggle through silent witness, how to “listen to the silence of the Word” so that it may become more powerful than any compromised word. In the immense cathedral that is the universe of God, the layperson — whether worker or scholar — makes of all humanity an offering, a hymn, a doxology. He is the one who responds to the closing of the Gospel according to Saint Mark: the one who walks on serpents, heals the sick, moves mountains, and raises the dead — if such be the will of God. Let him live his faith simply, to the very end, and stand firm in its fulfillment. Amazed at the very existence of God, he contemplates Wisdom even in the apparent absurdity of history — and becomes light, revelation, prophecy. He is also a man whom faith has liberated from the “great fear of the twentieth century” — the fear of the bomb, of cancer, of Communism, of death — for faith is always a certain way of loving the world, in following the Lord even into the descent to hell. To be a true layperson is to be the one who, through the whole of his life, by what is already present in him, announces the One who is to come; the one who, according to Saint Gregory of Nyssa, full of “sober inebriation,” cries out to every passerby: “Come and drink!” and who says with Saint John Climacus: “Your love has wounded my soul, and my heart cannot bear Your flames; I go forward singing to You…”
Jesus Christ, through the total gift of Himself, revealed the perfect priesthood. Image of all perfections, He is the only supreme Bishop. He is also the only supreme Layman. This is why His high priestly prayer bears the desire of all the saints: to glorify the Holy Trinity with one heart and one soul, and to gather all people around the one and only Chalice, symbol of His singular Love. It already inaugurates the Feast of the Kingdom.
The Mystical Ascent
A monk recently wrote The Presence of Christ.5 He recounts a day spent with Jesus. By living the Gospel through the humblest things of everyday life, one draws astonishingly close to both Jesus and to other human beings. A prayer springs forth: “Do not allow Your Word to be in my life like a sanctuary cut off from the house and the street by a grille.” This is certainly not about “rules,” but about a way of life — a spiritual life attentive to the presence of Christ, Who expects from us a kind of creative genius in recognizing and following Him. The “ladders” spoken of by the spiritual elders are ladders descending toward other people, to find there the ascent of all together toward the One who waits for us. The saying on the Last Judgment strikes by its simplicity: its only accusation is to have been inattentive to the presence of our neighbor — and especially to the presence of Christ in every suffering person. “When a pilgrim or guest comes to visit, bow before him. Not before the man, but before God. For it is said: You see your brother, you see your God,” says Abba Apollos. This is no formula, but the expression of Christ’s single thirst. Whoever can say to each person, “My joy,” addresses the human being as the dwelling place of God.
In speaking of the Last Judgment, the Gospel emphasizes the decisive nature of the present moment. By a strange alienation, human beings live mostly in the past — in memories — or in expectation of the future; as for the present moment, they seek to escape it, using their inventive minds to better “kill time.” They do not live in the here and now, but in daydreams of which they are unaware. But the ascetical adage affirms: “The hour you are living, the task you are doing, the person you are encountering at this moment — these are the most important of your life.” They are such, because the past and future do not exist, and the eternal — the “eternal present” — converges only upon the present moment, and is given only to the one who makes himself fully available and present to it.
Seen from above, a saint is already woven of light; but seen from below, he does not cease to struggle. “The purity of heart is the love of the weak who fall.” (Saint Isaac [the Syrian]). The soul expands and sheds all judgment: “He who is purified sees the soul of his neighbor.” “When someone sees all people as good, and when no one appears to him as impure, then we can say that he is pure of heart.” “If you see your brother sinning, throw over his shoulders the cloak of your love.” (Saint Isaac). “Love is God launching the arrow — His only-begotten Son — after moistening the three barbs of the point with the life-giving Spirit; the point is faith, which not only allows the arrow to enter, but brings the Archer in with it” (Saint Gregory of Nyssa).
The spiritual elders never speak of the summits; only silence reveals them. Saint Symeon says: “But what shall I say of that which is inexpressible? What the eye has not seen, what the ear has not heard, what has not entered the heart of man — how could such things be expressed in words?” “The soul prays beyond prayer” — it is the peace that surpasses all peace. “God comes into the soul, and the soul emigrates into God…”
Conclusion
An Orthodox Christian living in the West perceives a malaise, a certain unease. The “new theology,” the theory of secularization, raise troubling questions, for they touch upon the constitutive elements of the faith. Exegesis, increasingly autonomous, calls into question the historicity of Christ’s Resurrection and His miraculous Nativity — not to mention the existence of angels, demons, and the reality of miracles, which are often dismissed wholesale as myths. One senses a growing distance between faith, now opposed to religion,6 and the entire biblical reality as understood in the Tradition of the Fathers.
What is the response of an Orthodox Christian? Ecumenical participation in a shared destiny cannot leave anyone indifferent. Orthodox Christians follow these current issues with great interest — one could even say, with passion — but without being themselves shaken or disturbed in regard to their faith or their Christian vision of the world. Or rather — they are touched, but in a different way: by discerning the positive elements, and especially the urgent need to move beyond a certain immobilism, a vision inherited from another century. There is a pressing need to confront the living Tradition of the Church with entirely new problems — but ones that lie not on the level of faith, but on that of the Church’s mission: How can the Gospel be communicated to the spirit of modern man, in a civilization that is urban and industrial?
We hope that everything we have said about Orthodox spirituality has already clarified the difference in response. It may be, above all, a difference of pedagogical formation, of the very type of believer — a person shaped by the liturgy and the collegial experience of God. At the risk of repeating ourselves, we will highlight a few features of this formation.
The “death of God” signifies the death of a certain theology — one in which a logical God is knowable by natural means. This God becomes an object of conceptual knowledge, placed at the summit of moral values, made a support for social order, and put to the service of theologians. A gulf has formed between dogma, theology, and the spirituality of the people. “Mystical theology” has become a specialized branch of study, no longer the source of life, adoration, and doxology. The personal relationship between God and man has been distorted either by the overbearing mediation of ecclesiastical institution, or locked within an individualism that loses all sense of sobornost (spiritual communion).
When comparing the traditions, it becomes evident that the ignorance of apophatic theology is what leads to replacing God with metaphysical concepts. Yet the Eastern Fathers are unanimous: the negative way (via negativa) is not a way of negation; it has nothing in common with agnosticism. Negativity is not negation. Nor is it simply a corrective or a cautionary reminder. Through negations, it leads to a mystical hyper-knowledge, a grasp of the Inconceivable. By an “intuitive, primordial, and simple approach,” it knows beyond all intellection — a kind of transcendence that never detaches itself from its historical and biblical foundation. The higher the vertical axis of transcendence is raised, the more deeply it is rooted in the horizontal axis of immanence. It places the human spirit in generative experience of unity, like the mystery of eucharistic union. The more unknowable God is in the transcendence of His Essence, the more He is experienced in immediate nearness as the One who exists. The contemporary problem, therefore, is not the existence of God, but rather His presence in the history of mankind. Religious language, its specialized vocabulary, and the supposedly mythological elements of the Bible — in the light of apophasis — are merely symbols and approaches that leave the Mystery untouched.
Eastern monastic spirituality preserves the faith from all compromise by refusing the rational and conceptual idols of God. It transcends morality toward a metanoia of ontological holiness, within the sacramental and liturgical atmosphere of lived experience. In a world of discursive and technological knowledge, monasticism is a school of direct encounter with God. Personal experience is inseparably united to collegial experience; one requires the other, and they complete each other. There is no gap between mysticism and theology, prayer and dogma. Mystical life, open to all, brings to light the content of the common faith, and theology gives it expression. The vision of God arises from the depths of liturgical adoration, marked by certainty and clarity. Iconographic culture teaches that the Word of God and the Name of God are epiphanic; they are accompanied by His real and immediate presence.
The Word broken and Eucharistically consumed, the assistance of the Holy Spirit Who, according to the Fathers, “presides” over the Councils, the experience of God among the saints — none of these is an authority or a proof, but rather the testimony of the Truth that sets free and bears witness to itself. It calls us to freedom, not as a right, but as a duty. We live in continuity with the prophets and the Fathers; we make their witness our own. The witnesses, the Fathers, “have visited the homeland” of which they speak; they know that which they affirm.
Faith far surpasses mere intellectual assent; it is an act — a total reversal of the human being — which places him within the Pauline perspective of the “new creation.” Natural reason (lumen rationis naturalis) is of little concern to Orthodoxy, which is centered instead on the “intelligence renewed in Christ,” the “light which enlightens every man coming into the world,” a light that transfigures human nature.
It is the Church that establishes the direct relationship between God and man, and its realism is emphasized by Saint Symeon the New Theologian: “He who is not aware that he is putting on Christ nullifies the grace of baptism.” On this level, it is no longer a matter of forgiveness of sins, reconciliation, or submission, but rather of deliverance, healing, and the deification of the human being. The Fall created ontological impasses; Christ resumes what was interrupted, and restores us to the original ontological conditions, which is why the revelation of the transfigured Christ and the iconographic contemplation of the saints of the Eighth Day are so crucial.
Liturgy, the Creed, the dogmas — these are truths gradually given to the Church by the Holy Spirit, expressed in the consensus patrum, where the inseparable unity of thought and life is brought about. It is this unity that “disarms” the “new theology.” Such theology does not touch the Orthodox ethos, nor the experiential structure of its spirituality, nor the foundations of its faith. The Resurrection of Christ, His miraculous Nativity, the biblical affirmations about angels, demons, and miracles — these are evident facts, lived “supernaturally naturally,” and which pose no question.
In the face of secularization theories, Orthodoxy remains faithful to the heritage of the Fathers, to a vision that transcends every era. Social reform, for instance — preached with great force by the Fathers of the fourth century — is among the most relevant topics today in regard to the Third World. The Church remains, in essence, communion in the mystery of divine life and a progressive transfiguration of humanity and the cosmos into the image of the risen Christ. The much-discussed phenomenon of de-Christianization is strongly contested by American sociologists, and historical comparisons regarding a “dying faith” often turn out to be more edifying than alarming. The Churches — so many times declared dead — are very much alive. It is rather atheism that now seems outdated, offering no nutritive substance. In Marxist countries, the Church confronts the ultimate secularization — atheism imposed by the State — and yet demonstrates its capacity to exist under any regime. Certainly, it is a life of martyrdom, lived in silence and under the Cross, but it is more alive than ever, and sustains a vision no longer “theocratic” but Christocentric, resting solely on the communion of true believers. The testimony of their lives desanctifies and demythologizes Marxism, reducing it to its proper dimension as mere matter. In Russia, around the churches, on the night of Pascha, when hostile voices cry “God is dead,” the faithful — like apostolic men, as eyewitnesses — respond joyfully: “Christ is risen!” In Romania, Patriarch Justinian called monks to social service, participating in the transformation of nature exalted by communism — but giving it the character of a “mystical labor of transfiguration of nature and deification of man in Christ.” Let the monks — and all the faithful — “fulfill their prayer on behalf of those who do not know how, or cannot, or do not wish to pray — especially for those who have never prayed.”
The purple thread of the martyrs’ blood and the golden thread of the light of the saints of all ages find, even in the depths of modern hells, the abyss of the Father. And from that vertiginous path, faith emerges only refreshed and intact, disarming all attempts at interior secularization and the erosion of faith by countless “new theologies.”
It is through simple but total lived experience — the great lesson of the Fathers, who teach the essential inseparability of word and life — that one naturally overcomes all structural discontinuities and the dissolution of truth into hermeneutics, which becomes sterile as soon as it pretends to stand as an omnipotent judge. If anything must be demythologized, it is not the Bible, but the exegesis that bows before philosophical idols and refuses to shed its blood to receive the Spirit.
The real difficulties do not lie at the level of the structures and statuses of priesthood or laity — which must not seek to blend into the world, but rather to fulfill their distinct and full vocations. They arise from the confrontation between the conditional realities of the world and the unconditional faith in the divinity of Christ, His Resurrection, and His power to save all men. In the midst of the storm, Christ still asks the same fundamental question: “Where is your faith?” To return to the essential, to return to the sources of the Gospel, to once again become the salt of the earth, a true renewal must take place through the power of a direct link to Christ, and of the ultimate reality so powerfully and universally testified to by the Holy Spirit, “for those who have ears to hear.”
Not God alone, the God of a triumphalist and outdated theology, nor man alone, as in an exhausted and obsolete atheism, but the vision of the God-Man, the cosmic Christ, who restores to both man and nature their ontological dignity of the Eighth Day — this is the vision that can speak to modern man, and respond to his thirst.
It is so that the word may be fulfilled: “I did not come to condemn the world, but to save the world” that the Parousia presupposes the preliminary Pentecost of Christian unity. From the search for the salvation of the world, from the Pentecostal assumption of culture and of all that is human, from the fullness of the faith of the Fathers, will burst forth the ecumenical epiclesis of all the Churches — their ardent invocation for the final descent of the Holy Spirit.
The Comforter, the Witness of the Mystery of God, will make to be seen, in every human being, the face of the Risen One. “You have seen your brother, you have seen God,” says the ancient agraphon, “for he who has recognized the Son has seen the Father.”
Editor’s note: see Matthew 11:12.
Editor’s note: A Slavonic term meaning “elder,” usually referring to a experienced and holy spiritual guide.
Editor’s note: Foolishness for Christ is a manifestation of holiness universal in Orthodoxy but particularly beloved in Russia, referring to those who accept the scorn of the world in the abandon of a complete pursuit of obedience to Christ and whose scandalous or merely eccentric behavior often conceals pointed criticism of the wealthy and powerful, or prophetic insights.
Editor’s note: Evdokimov’s words recall, and may tacitly refer to, the now-famous composition attributed to the New Hieromartyr Metropolitan Tykhon of Turkestan, the akathist hymn “Glory To God For All Things.”
Lev Gillet, Présence du Christ (Chevetogne: Éditions de Chevetogne, 1960). English edition: Lev Gillet, In Thy Presence: The Prayer of a Priest (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1977).
Editor’s note: These days, the distinction is usually between “spirituality” and religion.
This author is so incredibly good ahhh. Thank you for translating.
I really want to get these published in a proper physical book my man.